political perspectives from Joni Hudson-Reynolds, an African-American Mom

Fox and Friends “Obama Then and Now” or is this simply a GOP Attack Ad?

This appeared on Fox and Friends this morning. There is no wonder why this is Mitt Romney’s destination station. This clip has been criticized by folks on the right and the left, but for Fox this is just news, but for others this is an attack ad. share your thoughts.

Update: Bill Shine, Fox News executive vice president of programming, issued a statement to TVNewser: “The package that aired on FOX & Friends was created by an associate producer and was not authorized at the senior executive level of the network. This has been addressed with the show’s producers.” this is interesting in light of the full-throated endorsement of the anchors in the introduction.

Comments

Most rational people realize that FOX, owned by Rupert Murdoch and managed by Roger Ailes, is simply the de facto propaganda arm of the Republican Party, which itself is an extreme ideological institution beholden to the moneyed interests of this country, unrepresentative of most people who call themselves Republicans. It is not a news organization. So everything that comes from it’s so-called news division is pure propaganda. The goal of propaganda is to distort reality for a purpose, in this case to manipulate relatively ignorant voters to vote for the moneyed interests behind FOX. People who rely on FOX for their news are actually less knowledgeable about current events than people who have no source for news. Cite.

In all fairness, and I know there will be those who say this, MSNBC sometimes appears to be a propaganda arm for the Democratic party. Shows like Maddow, Shulttz, Matthews, Hayes etc, are very distinctly pro-Obama, and pro-Democrat. But there is a distinction with a difference. That distinction is in the definition of “propaganda”. Fox lies, distorts and obfuscates the news, to manipulate people into believing something that’s not true. The left side of MSNBC actually arose to counter the BS coming from FOX. Keith Olbermann became more and more caustic in his comments, primarily as a result of FOX, before he left MSNBC. Without FOX, there would be no MSNBC, or at least not the aforementioned programs. AND, those shows don’t spew propaganda. I have not seen anything other than well articulated counter arguments to Republican crap. Sure, they take a Democratic spin. It’s impossible to have all supposedly “neutral” news on all the stations except FOX. Someone has to counter them. But I have not seen, for instance, the opposite of what FOX produced above.

If you want to read a short, well researched, timely book on what the hell has been going on for the past 30 years, (it didn’t start with Bush, and certainly not Obama) read, It’s Even Worse Than It Looks by Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein, two conservative observers, scholars and commentators on Washington. They are going to be on Chris Hayes show this weekend talking about that book. either 8 Am Saturday or Sunday, not sure which (he’s on both days)

And to answer your question. That’s just a big ad for Romney. “Fair and Balanced” (the FOX logo). What a laugh. Did that look like fair and balanced to you? I stopped counting the lies when Newt Gingrich came on and talked about food stamps.

I find it to be fact. Obama can’t run on Hope and Change this time around. He needs to run on his record. Sadly, his record is not very good.

I’m a Republican, however, I had very high hopes for Obama when he entered the White House. I thought he was really what we needed. That was not to be. It is obvious he has no experience and he did not even have the sense to surround himself with experts.

His entire team (with the exception of Hillary) are his campaigne team and “yes men”.

I suppose reminding the Obama Kool Aid drinkers of all of the broken promises and prevarications made by him could be perceived as an attack ad. For me, as an opponent, it is just a reminder in his own words of many of the campaign promises that I did not believe he had any intentions of even attempting to make good on.

One more thing. When you see shit like FOX puts together claiming that Obama did nothing, accomplished nothing, and in the process of doing nothing, spent more of our money than any other President, (see above) bookmark this site, so you can refute it.

And for some reason that link to the book I cited didn’t take. Here it is again.

Mo I don’t write down to my readers what I do is put forth information and give the readers like you to have a discussion about issues in the news. I know the Fox agenda but this is a timely post designed to discuss their latest antics.